


someday my pain will mark you

by amethystsarah



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 08:14:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1259263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amethystsarah/pseuds/amethystsarah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Arya Stark dreams of another life. </p><p>Or, a modern reincarnation AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	someday my pain will mark you

**Author's Note:**

> I'm in the middle of the extremely slow process of moving my fics from LiveJournal over here. So, if this seems familiar or if you have any desire to read this over on LJ, it's cross-posted [here](http://solstice-lj.livejournal.com/4257.html). 
> 
> Title from Bon Iver's _The Wolves (Act I And II)_.

Arya’s supposed to be in third period English Literature, but a summons from the principal disrupts her schedule. Arya isn’t bothered; this has happened many times before. Plus, this time, she knows what she’s here for.

Which is how, when she walks into the waiting area, muttering a hello to the disapproving receptionist, that she first meets Gendry Waters. He’s a few years older than her, and thus a few grades ahead, so she’s never seen him in her classes, but as she walks, his eyes flicker up to meet hers curiously—

—she stumbles. Maybe it’s just his eyes, startlingly blue, that surprise her. The rest of him is more mundane; messy, dark hair and a muscular body (for, when he moves in his chair, Arya has no trouble seeing the muscles that shift in defined patterns underneath his skin.) Sansa would think him handsome, she supposes. But Sansa is at the stage where all she does is coo silly over boys with her friends—or, at least, that is what Arya thinks—and Arya will _never_ be silly over boys.

She sinks down into a chair and looks at the boy a few chairs down from her. The word she would pick to describe him would not be handsome, but familiar. For some strange reason, his presence makes her comfortable, makes her _feel_ comfortable.

(No one should be able—is able to—make Arya Stark feel emotions she doesn’t want to feel.)

She ignores him, and it is all too easy to do so when the principal walks through the door and she jumps up in indignation even before he speaks.

“Ms. Stark,” the principal sighs, and Arya already knows how this conversation will go.

“I had to!” she defends herself, hands raising. “They—they were saying bad things about Jon!”

Jon. Jon is the only person in the world who Arya thinks might just understand her. Even if he is her older brother, and almost out of high school while she’s just starting it. And even if he can take care of himself, even if he says he doesn’t care about what they say. Even if he’s only her half-brother.

Everyone gossips about it, gossips about the rich Stark family, and the one child who’s the product of an affair, who’s not really a Stark at all. And so, when she hears some boy in the hallway say bad things about Jon, she doesn’t think—her blood just boils and she punches him.

“Physical violence is not tolerated at this school,” the principal replies and Arya opens her mouth to protest prematurely.

She barely hurt the boy, anyway. As much as she hates, she’s no taller than 5”3’ at most and her punches don’t pack as much vigor as much as she wishes they did. But before she can say anything, someone else interrupts.

It’s the boy behind her that she’s forgotten about. “She was provoked,” he says calmly, like it’s a fact. “I was there—the guy was being a complete—“

Arya narrows her eyes at him; she tenses. He blinks those infuriately blue eyes at her.

“Yes, well,” the principal says uncomfortably. “I get the picture.” Arya gets off with only a warning and a short lecture about what happens when people resort to using physical violence. (Apparently, as she’s told, life goes downhill from there.)

She walks out of the office and a few moments later, he ambles down the hallway after her. Arya whirls, stomps right up to him. “What was that for?” she demands.

He looks irrationally confused for a second until he realizes what she’s talking about—as if she could be talking about anything else. “I was trying to help,” he says, shrugging. “It looked like you needed it.”

And maybe that’s what annoys her—this strange boy, with his strange kindness and the strange things she feels around him already. “Yeah, well, I didn’t need it,” she growls, already turning away.

She’s a few feet down the hallway when he calls back to her, “I’m Gendry.”

(Something in her resonates at the words, at Gendry.) Arya rounds the corner and refuses to look back at him.

* * *

Ned and Catelyn host a fancy dinner party filled with snobby business associates and their equally snobby kids. Arya knows her parents like these people only a little more than she does—and she doesn’t like them at all—but when she suggests they cancel the dinner, both of them just laugh.

Arya’s forced into a green dress and annoying black flats for the occasion. Her only consolation is that the green is an olive color; a color her mother says suits her complexion beautifully. Arya glowers at her feet and tugs at the dress until Catelyn stops her.

Sansa’s the one who looks beautiful, Arya muses as she sees her sister enter the spacious room in a pink dress, cheeks matching. She spends most of evening coldly refusing anyone who dares to ask her to dance and wishing she was allowed more than one glass of champagne.

Several hours later, Arya convinces Gendry to wait for her outside while she sneaks out under the guise of going to the bathroom. (“Your brothers are going to kill me. I’m going to kill me.” “Don’t be such a baby.”) Even if she’s only known him for a year, he’s quickly become her closest friend. Arya doesn’t get along well with kids at school—and Jon, more her friend than her brother, is going away to college in the fall. The thought terrifies her. She still has Bran though, and Robb, and yes, Sansa.

Her dress snags on the window (the only way to sneak out of a dinner party is through the bathroom window, after all) and there’s an awful ripping sound before she tumbles, less gracefully than planned, to the ground.

Gendry finds her a moment later. The first emotion that crosses his face is concern—that is, before he takes a good look at her. He bursts out laughing. She gets up off the ground just to shove him down onto it. He tangles his feet into hers in retaliation and brings her crashing to the ground with him. Sometime between the punch she throws halfheartedly at him and the light kick he delivers to her shin, Arya starts laughing with him. She stops laughing eventually, when her stomach hurts from it, choosing to just lie on the grass alongside him.

He turns his head to look at her, cheek flat against the ground, and the soft light from the windows of her house a few feet away make his blue eyes look rather strange.

“What?” she asks. She feels uncomfortable, sort of like she’s having a flash of déjà vu, but she can’t quite describe it.

“You look all… ladylike,” he says and there’s no reason she can think up to excuse his strange tone so she snorts instead.

“I am not ladylike,” Arya retorts.

“Yeah, alright,” Gendry mutters, voice low, turning his head back to look up at the sky.

“Stop being stupid,” she tells him. They lay in silence until the dinner party is over.

* * *

Arya denies it for months, until she can’t anymore, until every moment sends her staggering for balance as a lost memory rams into her. It’s too much to take in, almost too much to believe; only in some strange, lost part of her, she does believe it.

She decides to tell Gendry almost immediately, and rethinks it almost as immediately. How exactly does she tell him that she thinks she’s had a past life, that they’ve all had past lives, and that she knew him in that supposed past life? It hurts her head to think about it. Only, she does think about it—and the more she does, the more she can’t stop thinking about it.

Gendry notices, of course. He notices that she’s nervous, quieter than normal, and he gets tired waiting for her to explain it. In true problem-solving fashion, he drags her into a bathroom during lunch at school and asks what’s bothering her.

Arya can’t find it in her to avoid the subject any longer. “Do you ever,” she starts out. “I mean… do you think—“ Trying to ignore her sudden inability to get a full sentence out, she looks up at him.

He’s avoiding her eyes, and Arya knows the expression on his face. It’s his guilty expression, and suddenly, she _knows_.

“You know!” she bursts out, loud and with a startling clarity. She hasn’t said anything, he hasn’t said anything, but she knows.

“I—“ Gendry starts, but the emotions on his face confirm what she already knows—that he knows.

The bell signaling the start of class rings and she rushes out of the bathroom. It’s easy to avoid him when school ends; she doesn’t stop to put her books back in her locker, she just leaves. She navigates the flow of students around her until she’s out of the school doors, into the fresh air.

In fact, she manages to avoid him until that night, when Ned asks her to take out the trash and there he is, walking down her driveway. She quickly hauls it to the side of the street, arms burning slightly from the weight of the trash bag, determined to ignore him.

He comes up to her, hands by his sides, even though she can see that his fingers are clenched into self-conscious fists; his blue eyes reveal the same emotion. Just like that, the tight coil of anger in her chest untangles.

She turns, walking back towards her house, and he falls into step beside her. He’s silent until they reach the porch before speaking up.

“What could I have said?” he asks softly.

Arya wants to say, _Something—you could have said something_ —but she doesn’t. She is angry, of course, but anger takes effort she doesn’t have at the moment. What she does have is an apologetic Gendry, so she takes it and gives him a small smile in return as she sinks down onto the steps of the porch.

“Besides, nothing’s changed,” Gendry says, and there’s a bitter twist to his lips she doesn’t understand.

“You’ve gotten stupider,” Arya tells him instead, almost fondly, a small grin crossing her lips; her teeth seem to sharpen to points in the dim light, the smile of a wolf.

( _Nymeria_ , some part of her murmurs.)

She thinks he’s about to retaliate with some sharp comment that will make her blood boil, that’ll make her want to push him to the ground—she’s done that so many times before—but he only shakes his head, lets out a lingering breath, and sits beside her.

She knows this side of him (she knows all sides of him, after all) but she doesn’t really understand it, and while Arya Stark might stand tall in the face of perceived danger, uncomfortable emotions are the first thing that will send her running. She twists her fingers in her lap awkwardly and fidgets.

Gendry looks at her position—awkward fidgeting and all—and laughs, a sarcastic sound that raises her hackles.

“What?” she snaps defensively.

He leans back against the stoop of her house and shakes his head again. “Nothing,” he replies finally. “Nevermind.”

It’s only later, lying in bed, that it occurs to Arya what he could have meant when he said nothing had changed. Because she’s still Arya Stark, daughter of a rich and prominent family, and he’s still Gendry Waters, son of an absent father and a frail mother.

But for some reason, this thought bothers her. He can’t really be thinking like that, can he? Rolling over and sighing into her pillow, she resolves not to think about it.

* * *

He tells her that he’s leaving for college a few weeks before fall. Arya doesn’t expect it, isn’t prepared. She had thought he was staying in the city, had thought he was staying with her—what had she been thinking? He doesn’t look at her when he tells her, and maybe that’s what finally pushes her over the edge.

“Fine,” she says defiantly, straightening her back and raising her chin.

His blue eyes flicker to hers; he winces. She feels a vindictive pleasure, knowing he feels the same ache that she does.

“I don’t care,” Arya adds spitefully, and thinks, _if I hurt, he does too_.

She can see the anger in his face, in the way he holds himself, muscles taut, but she doesn’t think it will explode so suddenly.

“What do you expect, Arya?” he asks, voice rough. “I have to go to college if I’m going to get a decent job! Not all of us have colleges already begging for our application! Not all of us can rely on _daddy’s_ money or reputation!” He stops speaking just as abruptly, eyes almost— _almost_ —contrite.

She can feel the anger claw its way out of her and she doesn’t resist. Arya shoves him—really shoves him, palms splayed against his chest for one quiet, still moment before he topples over. Before he can so much as look up at her, she’s gone, running away as fast as she can.

That night she dreams (she _remembers_ ) and he leaves her there too, off to be some silly knight, and she thinks, _you could have come to Riverrun with me, you could have made swords for my brother._

When she wakes up she thinks, _you could have stayed here with me_ , but no matter what the situation, the tangled mess of feelings in her chest stays the same.

They don’t talk for the rest of the week. On Sunday Arya sees a moving truck pulling away from his house. He’s gone, she tells herself. Gone. And everyone leaves her in the end—Jon, Jon’s gone as well, and maybe Robb or Sansa or Bran will be next.

She spends the next few weeks moping around the house and teaching herself to skateboard because, well, now that she doesn’t have a best friend she might as well have a hobby. The scraped knees she gets in return are a distraction.

Sansa walks into her room one afternoon searching for a skirt she swears she left there (except Sansa doesn’t swear—the idea is laughable—so Arya just rolls her eyes.) The fair weather and sun treat her sister well; Sansa’s cheeks are flushed a delicate pink and her hair is the perfect shade of auburn. Arya observes this with a small amount of jealousy but the feeling is rather faint and she can’t muster up any stronger emotion.

Pulling her skirt out from underneath the bed with a satisfied smile, Sansa turns to her and cocks her head inquiringly. Arya can feel her sister’s gaze sweep over the circles under her eyes and her slouched position on her bed.

“You still haven’t called him, have you?” she asks.

Arya tenses. “It’s none of your business!” she says indignantly, but feeling a twinge of guilt in her chest she adds somewhat petulantly, “Besides, why should I call him?”

Sansa studies her for a second then gracefully concedes, closing the door of Arya’s bedroom after herself.

A week later, Arya misses a call on her cell phone and a familiar voice leaves a voicemail message.

 _Uh, hey. So, Sansa called me. She said something about you not getting enough sleep—and learning to skateboard, I think? From what I understood, she considers it an uncivilized sport. Her words._ (Long pause.) _Seven hells, Arya! It was a dumb argument, okay? I just want to forget about it. Look, I’m coming home for winter break in a few weeks. I’ll see you then. Bye._ (Silence.) _I miss you._ (Message ends.) 

* * *

He comes back for a few days at the end of November, but Arya doesn’t get to see him, away on a school trip. It seems like some sort of cosmic joke, but he comes home for winter break and she realizes just what she’s been missing. It snows the third day he’s back and they spend the whole day out in the snow, having snowball fights that include bouts of general violent behavior and bad manners.

During one fight, Arya manages to catch him by surprise, pushing him to the ground. She straddles him in order to make good on her threat to shove a handful of snow down his shirt, her legs on the outside of his. He grins, unconcerned with her threat, all messy hair and bright, laughing eyes.

Suddenly, from the back of her mind, she remembers what he told her a few months ago—and she understands, finally.

“You’re right,” Arya says to him; his eyebrows furrow.

“Right about what?” he asks, still pinned underneath her but willing to play along.

“Nothing’s changed,” she repeats and kisses him. His lips are cold but he tastes of everything she remembers and Arya doesn’t want anything more.


End file.
